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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026

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The big issue is the Fascist-Feminist synthesis means both the Left and the Right actually agree on this issue, but for wildly different reasons:

  • Older women viscerally hate it when older men date younger women, which has led to the Left broadly being hostile towards age gap relationships.
  • The Right has two elements: First, there was a lot of (wildly incorrect) hysteria that Leftists were going to try to make pedophilia legal as the next step on the slippery slope after gays and trans were done. Second, there's long been a bunch of conspiracies about pedophiles controlling the government in QAnon or Pizzagate form, so there's been a ridiculous trend to try and link practically anything towards sinister cabals of pedophiles.

As such, there's almost no political appetite for decreasing the age of consent.

As for what it ought to be, 15 does indeed seem like a more reasonable age than 18. It wasn't even that uncommon all that long ago, heck a lot of countries in Europe have their ages at 14. In terms of mentality, a lot of it depends on the individual's IQ. A 130 IQ kid could be emancipated at 13 and would probably make better decisions than the average adult, and there's an argument to be made that an 85 IQ person should always be treated as a child to some extent. But polite society has an allergy to explicit references to IQ so we just randomly draw a line at 16-18 and call it good enough I guess.

makes me think this topic is for some reason stratified mainly by intelligence.

How convenient it's only we knuckle-dragging mouth breathers who object to your reasonable proposal!

Every time I see this argument in the wild. Every. God. Damn. Time. It's maybe not a troll, but it is a guy who genuinely wants to stick his dick into underage pussy and feels unfairly victimised by society who think 30-40 year old men should not be eyeing up 13 year olds for their big racks. Of course society is made up of the stupid and the really intelligent deep thinkers like Underage Pussy For Me guys are the victims of their unreasonable distaste.

Every. God. Damn. Time.

Either you've got a lousy memory, or you're calling me a liar.

I do have a terrible memory, so I didn't remember you were one of the "it's perfectly normal for older men to want to fuck pubescent girls" types.

You claim it's not because of such attraction on your part, but pure devotion to scientific fact? Well, you have your claims as to motives, I have my beliefs as to motives, and since nobody is a mind-reader, all such will remain in the privacy of our skulls.

Unfalsifiable beliefs are pretty weak sauce. There are very few things more antithetical to the purpose of this place than do this kind of bulverism in the pursuit of defending taboos.

You claim it's not because of such attraction on your part, but pure devotion to scientific fact?

Devotion to liberty.

I don't believe I've ever said that there aren't 12-year-old girls that I find sexually attractive. I haven't said that because it'd be untrue; while I'm not a paedophile in the proper sense, there are some very-early bloomers out there and, indeed, postpubescence is all that's really needed for the normal male gaze to approve. However, I have no intention of pursuing them in that fashion, and this is not related to my opposition to the current Anglospheric ages of consent.

Do you realise that you've set up epistemic closure, here? If someone says that he wants to lower the AoC because he wants to fuck kids, you count him as part of your "every time". If someone says the opposite, you count him as a liar and still as part of "every time". That's not an algorithm that depends on what the truth actually is; regardless of the evidence, you'll simply become more sure of yourself.

I actually suggest you take a look through my post history. See if I'm really the sort to lie about myself.